Accelerating protection of the Earth's ozone layer will be the urgent focus of governmental representatives meeting in Sri Lanka this week. The 13th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol will draw some 400 delegates from 130 countries.

EU and Africa ministers met on 11 October, in a follow up to the first ever EU-Africa Summit held in Cairo last year. The aim of the meeting with the heads of state was to discuss the ‘New Africa Initiative’ a political commitment from African leaders, based on a common vision of poverty eradication, growth and sustainable development.

Everywhere you go in South Africa, you're confronted with the pink and purple colours of loveLife - a controversial HIV/AIDS youth education campaign which encourages young South Africans to talk freely about sexual issues such as teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.

The media can expose corruption and increase pressure for better governance even in a country with regulatory and informal controls on the press, the World Bank has observed in its World Development report for the year 2002.

Over 40 people from around the world participated in this virtual seminar with some 60 postings presenting some of the extraordinary work being carried out with men to end gender-based violence, experiences with this work and lessons learned.

the Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness Programme (WIDSAA) produces a quarterly newsletter titled the Gender and Development Exchange (GAD Exchange) that profiles and analyses current gender and development issues. It aims to be a catalyst and stimuli not only to partners in 14 countries to closely examine the significance of national issues for regional development, but to also provide a platform for gender activists to raise contemporary issues for critical debate. The Editorial Team is calling for papers for Issue No 26 of the GAD Exchange. Writers are invited to submit articles analyzing developments in the areas outlined below, and their significance for, and advancing the regional gender agenda. Deadline for articles 25th October, 2001.

A 30-year old woman, Safiya Hussaini Tungar-Tudu was sentenced to death by stoning by the upper Sharia court Gwadabawa for committing adultery.

About 78 percent of Malawi's rural poor may not have food by December, according to the preliminary results of a World Vision survey.

The government on 12 October announced the introduction of a new US $100 million poverty reduction programme for northern Uganda, 'The New Vision' reported.

Sudan's Presidential Adviser for Political Affairs Qutbi al-Mahdi said on Wednesday that scheduled talks with the US in November would be aimed at establishing relations based on dialogue, respect for each others' sovereignty and joint interests.

A preliminary round of the inter-Congolese peace and reconciliation dialogue began as scheduled on Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, without the participation of Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila.

UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, has said the peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea is on track.

Illegal mining is continuing in the eastern region of Sierra Leone despite government efforts to ban the trade in 'conflict' diamonds.

Zambia's Vice President Enoch Kavindele said on Monday that opposition Forum for Democratic Development (FDD)presidential candidate Christon Tembo would not be allowed to stand in the election because his parents were from Malawi.

The humanitarian situation in Angola remained "serious, particularly in inaccessible regions where credible evidence indicates that conditions have deteriorated markedly", UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in his latest report to the Security Council.

The Global Corruption Report 2001, launched on 15 October 2001, is the new publication of Transparency International (TI), the leading global anti-corruption NGO. It provides an overview of 'the state of corruption' around the globe.

Greetings. I've just subscribed to your news and found it very informative. A lot of people are not aware of your editorials and I will pass it on. In saying that the people who really need to read this news and need it most are those back in the homeland Africa. Keep up with the good work. I would like to update you with our news websites:

http://www.somalilandnet.com
Please feel free to use to urls for Somaliland Forum. Surely a large number of people are now aware of the struggle of Somaliland not to mention that the hard work they have done over the number of years. There is still a large number of landmines left by the regime of Siad Barre and it is very difficult for the children and rurla people to get on with their lives as normal. In saying that life must go on and Africans must face their future with a big hope.

Enjoyed the piece by Bell and Renner on the Marshall Plan -- seems to come up in conversation every few years. The writer from Worldwatch quotes this portion of General Marshall's speech: 'He said that there could be "no political stability and no assured peace" without economic security, and that U.S. policy was "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos."' While I couldn't agree more, I wonder about the proposed solution. The pertinent comment from General Marshall is this one: "Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist." The key word is "revival." General Marshall notes the fundamental characteristic of modern economies is the trade of processed goods from cities for agricultural commodities from farms. Enter a war and destroy the physical infrastructure by which to process goods, and there can only be hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. The purpose of the Marshall plan was to restore the physical infrastructure to an urban population that already had the individual skills and social institutions in place to make good use of it, thereby reviving what was there before. Is that the circumstance in which we find ourselves now? Will a provision of physical infrastructure on a massive world scale really achieve the results the authors expect? I worry that the circumstances are not sufficiently the same, and that a parallel to the Marshall plan will not be sufficient.

Euromed is asking, under the joint impact of globalisation/regionalisation and ageing of the European populations, for a new opening of various European countries (France, Spain, Germany…) to a "regulated" migratory flow coming from the South, as frustration is increasing among the populations of the South and East of the Mediterranean who knock at the doors of the European Union.

Africa, the world's most impoverished continent, continued to suffer the world's most pervasive violence during 2000 and in early 2001. Nearly 3 million Africans became new refugees or were newly displaced within their own countries during 2000. New population upheavals last year and in early 2001 occurred in Congo-Kinshasa, Burundi, Sudan, Eritrea, Angola, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, and Zambia.

After the hearing of the much-awaited Ogiek land case in Nairobi flopped last week, the case will now be mentioned on November 21.

More than 300 million children in the world suffer from chronic hunger and about half of them don't go to school. Some 170 million of them go to school on empty stomachs and don't receive any food during the day, while 130 million don't attend school at all. The United Nations World Food Programme says the twin problems of malnutrition and education can be solved if they're addressed simultaneously.

Imagine a tiny, beautiful, land-locked, densely populated and extremely poor African country that seven years ago was the site of a devastating civil war and genocide that left it in tatters. Now imagine a country that sets up an ICT Commission headed by its President; that adopts a national ICT Policy for the country and that sets up a top level national IT Agency to oversee a 400-page 5-year US$500 million plan and strategy for ICT. And finally imagine a country that commits to transforming itself from an essentially agrarian economy to a knowledge-based society within twenty years and that plans to become a services center in its region, despite being poorer than its neighbours and much less well-endowed with natural resources. Hard to reconcile these images, but they are indeed all of Rwanda. Jonathan Miller and Philip Esselaar look at the progress Rwanda is making and what it needs to tackle in the near future.

The Department of Home Affairs says it is on the way to becoming fully automated with a revamped, user-friendly Web site and intranet, and an online visa application and transfer system in the
offing.

The TAD Consortium is an e-mail service aimed primarily at people interested in using information and communication technologies to improve the quality of education in the developing world.

Free weekly email on the latest Internet trends and statistics

A new regional company called Manobi has been launched to deliver internet and wireless added-value e-services to farmers, fishermen, exporters, and all players involved in the value chain for tropical fresh food products. It claims its expertise covers all aspects of the agribusiness sector as well as internet and mobile hardware and software technology sectors.

The Centre for Population Studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine offers a four-week short course in Sexual and Reproductive Health Research. The course introduces participants to the principles and methods of effective social and demographic research in this field. The sessions draw on students' own ideas and experience to focus on the design of policy-oriented research and on the use of qualitative and quantitative methods used to evaluate the impact of programmes. The course is suitable for researchers, health care providers and programme managers and others who wish to commission or use research results.

This report, produced by the Benton Foundation, provides 15 stories illustrating the use of advocacy videos by broadcasters, individuals and nonprofits to motivate people to change their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries, and the laws that govern them.

This series of books is for leaders of organizations who want to increase their financial independence at a time when grants from foreign agencies are shifting or shrinking. They want to raise funds from people and organizations in their own communities, as well as from overseas. They want to work locally to raise a portion of the money they need, at the lowest possible cost. To get all that they must build a varied, sustained, local fundraising program. The books are written specially for agencies in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and who want to begin or improve their fundraising programs. (from eCIVICUS)

Take a look at the Digital Partners Social Enterprise Laboratory (SEL) web page. Applicants for this year numbered almost 40 innovative proposals for the use of IT in service to the world's poor. These ranged from Children's Health Information SmartCards in India to Wireless Communications Kiosks in Brazil to Computer Training for Rural Youths in Ghana - to name just three - and the diversity and caliber of this year's applications are high, says Akhtar Badshah, Executive Director of Digital Partners.

MySQL, the popular database programming language, has been upgraded to version 4.0.
At the moment it is only available in alpha, but the list of changes are available from the MySQL.com web site. This site will also provide morte information about SQL if you are interested in learning, and features links to discussions, help, tutorials, etc. There is also a discussion about the new version on .

The Government in Kenya says it has confirmed a case of anthrax exposure from a contaminated letter - the first such case outside the United States in the 11 September terror attacks.

Doctors of the World USA seeks experienced Program Coordinator for new project that will coordinate the work of physicians who provide medical expertise to US-based health and human rights advocacy efforts aimed at underserved populations. Requirements: Three years experience in service and advocacy work, strong communication, organizational, and time-management skills, and demonstrated record in initiating new projects and fostering productive inter-organizational collaborations. Preferred candidates will have: Masters degree or equivalent training or experience. Liaison experience with funders for advocacy and human rights work. Financial management experience and grant reporting experience a strong plus.

Sandton Crown Plaza, Johannesburg, South Africa
Call for abstracts deadline: 28 November 2001

Review by Ann Bown, National President, Southern Africa Institute of Fundraising: The book is easy to read and yet approaches the topic in an academic and studious manner, which convinces the reader that there really is something professional and even scientific about fundraising and resource mobilisation. The time has come for the work to be taken as a serious occupation and not just an ad-hoc, happenstance activity of maybe the director or a volunteer board member – if non-profit organisations are really serious about staying in business then they had better purchase a copy, digest the facts, apply the methodology and appoint a fulltime fund development officer.

The Scholars at Risk Network seeks a full-time project manager to develop the Student-to-Student Action Project (SSAP), a new initiative to assist students whose education has been interrupted by threats to their fundamental human rights. The project manager will be responsible for all aspects of the initiative, including (i) organizing participation of US students in campaigns for persecuted students, (ii) developing educational opportunities for refugee and other displaced students, (iii) developing advocacy projects related to threats to student leaders/activists, (iv) organizing conferences, lectures, and other awareness-building activities.

A devastating report on the impact of AIDS in South Africa has finally been published this week, despite concerted efforts by the South African government to suppress and discredit it. The report, produced by the Medical Research Council of South Africa, makes for alarming reading. It demonstrates that 40% of all deaths in the 15-49 age group in South Africa are now AIDS related, and it predicts that, if left unchecked, the total number of AIDS related deaths in South Africa will rise to between 5-7 million by 2010. By the end of this decade, the authors argue, average life expectancy will drop in South Africa from 54 to 41, and about 780,000 people will be dying each year from Aids, the highest number in any country in the world.

The authors of the report include researchers from the University of Cape Town and The London School of Tropical Hygiene. It has been subject to rigorous review, including approval by Peter Goldblatt, the chief medical statistician for England and Wales. The authors argue it represents the most comprehensive investigation to date of the effects of AIDS in South Africa, and its findings have been widely accepted by a range of organisations, including unions, churches, and even some politicians within the ANC.

Yet, the government itself has persistently tried to prevent its publication, and now seeks to undermine the report’s credibility. While Thabo Mbeki’s views - that AIDS is only responsible for a fraction of deaths, and may not even be related to HIV - are well known, the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and Essop Pahad have now weighed into the debate. In an attempt to discredit and deride the report, they have described it as a "massive propaganda tool" in the hands of those who argue for wide distribution of anti-retroviral drugs, and have condemned a "sense of hysteria" over the question of deaths from Aids.

If the findings of the report are shocking, the reaction of the South African government is even more so. In the words of anti-apartheid activist and former human rights commissioner, Rhoda Kadalie, who, writing in a Johannesburg newspaper, called on Dr Tshabalala-Msimang to resign: "We have a genocide on our hands and you and your cohorts have been unwilling to listen to the experts…If the president is making it impossible to do your work effectively, why not resign with dignity in defiance of someone who is taking the country down with him?"

As the recent United Nations Development Report on HIV/AIDS and poverty makes clear, if the devastation of AIDS in developing countries, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular is to be tackled, governments will need to implement a range of far reaching measures, that include adequate treatment as well as an adequate infrastructure to support people through the appalling toll that AIDS will wreak. COSATU, the Treatment Action Campaign and the Catholic Church have also called for such measures in South Africa. It is a matter of urgency that the South African government now takes its head out of the sand and acknowledges the real threat of AIDS before the horrific scenario predicted the MRC’s report becomes a reality.

Rhoda Kadalie’s words raise a critical question: Can a legal case be made to lay a charge of genocide against those individuals responsible? Article 6 of the Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court, for example, states: “For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part […] .” Are there other instruments that would allow an appropriate case to be made that the failure to act on HIV/AIDS amounts to an act of genocide? Should not efforts be made to test whether a formal charge of genocide can be made? Would not such an attempt act as a stimulus – perhaps the most effective of all – to get appropriate action taken by the authorities not only in South Africa, but also in other African states?

Aids will kill 700,000 South Africans a year

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Adult Mortality in South Africa, Medical Research Council Report

UNDP Report: HIV/AIDS: Implications for Poverty Reduction

COSATU: Joint statement on AIDS

The Coalition for Peace in Africa (COPA)will be holding a 5 week training workshop from 4 February 2002 to 8 March 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa. This workshop will cover diverse aspects of conflict transformation and peace building, and is aimed at capacity building for people working in conflict transformation, development, human rights and related fields on the African continent. For more information on the Coalition for Peace in Africa, membership of the Coalition and the Continental Course please contact

Michael E. Muragu, COPA Interim Coordinator, P.O. Box 13265, 00100, Nairobi GPO, Kenya, Tel: 254-2-577558, Fax: 254-2-577557 E-mail: [email protected]

or Genni Blunden, Transformation Education Africa, P.O. Box 16754, Lyttelton, 0140 South Africa, Tel & Fax: + 27 12 664 8380, E-mail: [email protected]

To increase the participation of women as PIs and co-PIs in international research projects the Women's International Science Collaboration (WISC) Program provides grants to individual US scientists who plan to establish new research partnerships with their colleagues in Central/Eastern Europe, the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, Near East, Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Pacific, and Asia.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said that intensive land cultivation methods using tractors and ploughs are a major cause of severe soil loss and land degradation in many developing countries.

This article by Ann Klofkorn Bloome, from the World Links Online Collaborative Project, discusses their ongoing initiative around HIV/AIDS in four African countries. The project targets students and teachers in Ghana, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe. An online facilitator focuses discussion around HIV/AIDS causes, myths, and community action.

This new publication by Panos Southern Africa seeks to answer the question: Can new media technology revolutionise the sub-region's development process? This study reveals that diverse experiences and government policies towards ICTs can help advance ICT development, and subsequently impact in changing people's lives. With a deep historical analysis of the African communication experience the study also brings out policy issues that affect the development of communication tools in the region. In all, 'Into or Out of the Digital Divide' provides a comprehensive picture of the Internet's place in southern Africa's socio-economic environment.

The United States and the other industrial nations should launch a global Marshall Plan to provide everyone on earth with a decent standard of living, argue the Worldwatch Institute.

The EHP library malaria bulletin no. 22 is now on the EHP website. Contents include: Action plan for the reduction of reliance on DDT in disease vector control. WHO, 2001; The impact of insecticide-treated bednets on malaria and anaemia in pregnancy in Kassena-Nankana district, Ghana: A randomized controlled trial; Community health worker performance in the management of multiple childhood illnesses: Siaya District, Kenya, 1997-2001.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday in New York City met with "top officials" from seven major drug companies in his continuing effort to gain price reductions for drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Kenyan police force came under the spotlight in the local press this week after six prisoners were found beaten to death in police cells in Thika, northeast of the capital, Nairobi.